PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT ? CORE D The purpose of the Bioinformatics Core is to support the research projects in the analysis, management, and synthesis of large scale and heterogeneous datasets. Data will come from a variety of sources including microbiome amplicon and genome sequencing, plasma RNAseq, metabolomics, and from individuals of mice and patients in clinical trials. By centralizing the development, maintenance, and implementation of bioinformatics tools, and providing an efficient framework for synthesizing data, this core will provide state-of-the-art bioinformatics capabilities that are responsive and tailored to user?s needs and ensure data compatibility and comparability within and across projects. The Bioinformatics Core has the following specific aims, each involving direct interactions with the research projects and other cores: (1) Develop, maintain, and implement bioinformatic pipelines for analysis of genomic and transcriptomic data from microbiomes and their hosts. This aim is crucial for supporting the research project aims that are focused on understanding how changes in the microbiome composition and metabolism are linked to metabolites, immune responses, and health outcomes. Bioinformatics Core staff and students will work directly with students, postdocs, and staff from each of the research projects (see Aim 2) to understand their scientific goals and develop bioinformatics solutions. (2) Train scientists in bioinformatics and foster communication between scientists and bioinformaticians. Bioinformatics staff and students will train students, postdocs, and staff from each of the research projects in both the conceptual understanding the technical implementation of the various tools. (3) Synthesize the diverse data streams with a database that is flexible for adaptation and enables user-friendly data queries and modeling to address research questions and aims of the projects. This specific aim addresses the challenge of analyzing and synthesizing enormous quantities of data that is highly complex and inter- connected, diverse in form, and multi-dimensional. This database will enable researchers to efficiently interrogate the data and export it into various formats for downstream purposes. The Bioinformatics Core will be directed by Dr. Gregory Dick.